Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) — the central monetary and regulatoryauthority — has decided to offload its stake from Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse)— the sole secondary market of the country. The central bank currently has 34.6per cent stake in Nepse.

Asper a letter sent by NRB to Nepse a month back, the local bourse has startedthe process to offload NRB’s shares through the auction model. “Nepse willtable this proposal in the next meeting of the board of directors of Nepse andthe board will be responsible for taking further decision on the proposal,”said Chandra Singh Saud, general manager of Nepse.

Nepsewill then only begin offloading NRB’s shares as per the decision made by theboard. “Once the board takes a decision it will take a short time to completethe auction process,” Saud informed.

TheFinancial Management Department of NRB had sent the letter to Nepse to startthe process of offloading its stake from the capital market operator. “We havenot yet received any response from Nepse regarding this issue,” said RajendraPandit, deputy spokesperson for NRB. “Nepse is solely responsible forcompleting the process.”

Thegovernment has planned to appoint a strategic partner at Nepse to furtherdevelop the capital market. As per plans of the Ministry of Finance, afterNRB’s shares are offloaded by Nepse, the government will begin the process toappoint a strategic partner at Nepse.

Thecentral bank had initially announced it would offload its stake from Nepse fiveyears ago but the plan was mentioned in the Monetary Policy only in the currentfiscal year. “The plan to offload NRB’s shares in Nepse was announced a longtime ago. I think the process will be completed shortly,” Pandit said.